Moment in Retrospect
by Wickfield
Summary: A moment in the hallway. The aftermath of an illicit affair. A marriage vow. Moments in the life of the characters in David Copperfield, written for the playlist drabble meme.
1. Violet Hill

_**A/N:** Okay, so yesterday I happened across a drabble meme with the following stipulations: 1 - Pick a character, pairing, or fandom you like (DC, clearly, to help me out with my FF100 claim), 2 - Turn on your music player and put it on random/shuffle, 3 - Write a drabble related to each song that plays. You only have the time frame of the song to finish the drabble; you start when the song starts, and stop when it's over. No lingering afterwards! (Which is not so hard as it sounds, though I did skip a few songs as most of the songs on my playlist were duplicates in meaning. :P)__ Right now I've posted the first 5 of the 10 I've written, and they are titled after the song upon which they are based. To get the full effect, go look up the lyrics on Google!_

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1. Violet Hill/Coldplay

**Prompt #061.** _Winter._

The mountains stood out in the distance like a sharp broken sky. Switzerland. The place to which Byron had fled, to where he had gone to think and dream, where I had gone to mend my soul. But ghosts may follow also, ghosts may stand out and whisper, and turn sweet dreams into nightmares. I had lived this way for a long time. I recall trampling the snow in the street, and looking up at the houses that rose, spectral and white, on both sides of me. So quaint they ought to have been, but in my distorted mind they seemed as if they had frozen to death, as if they were pale and ill and something other than theirselves. I remember seeing small faces within, peering outside as I walked past, and I fancied they were calling to me to help them, though I knew that in truth they were likely comfortable and warm by their fires within.

When I walked past one window I saw a small face, and a fair arm, and a cluster of curls, and it seemed as though she were calling to me to save her from this whiteness, but it was impossible. And on I walked.


	2. Wonderwall

2 – Wonderwall/Oasis

**Prompt #077.** _What?_

There are times to say things, and times when words are fruitless. To a gentleman whose heart is awakened, for the first time, to the splendor of love – a true and unalloyed love, yet a love ignored – words seem futile, seem like vague promisses to be broken as they have already been broken. As this gentleman sits in his chair, he wonders what kinds of sentiments could possibly express the tender devotion he feels for her, the gratitude, the appreciation – the LOVE! – how he can reply to all the things she said with no words at all, but with her works and with her eyes when he failed to see the meaning in them.

There are no words to say such things. Even if there were, it is too late for them now. It is time only for a return in action and deeds, and quiet patience and thanks for the way she recalled him to life, even if that life is one of the silence and lost chances he claimed for himself, these many years ago.


	3. White Flag

3 - White Flag/Dido

**Prompt #082**. _If._

It was one moment in a dark hallway, one moment when the stars shone in through the window down the hallway, one moment when both their faces were aligned, and when their images were painted in miniature in each other's eyes. It was one look.

If Agnes were to tell him now! If she were to speak, as he stands there and looks at her like some thing removed, and tell him that she is _not_ so far removed as he thinks, that she wishes to scream "save me, save me!" from her slow drowning in misery and time. Yes she knows she is the cause of the late scene – yes she knows it is for her sake that Papa has tottered out and slurred empty apologies, yes she knows that it was she who created the trouble, but cannot these things be swept away by this little housekeeper if she parts her lips and begs him to save her?

And yet she lets it pass. She holds her tongue, and David asks, quietly, "Agnes, may I help you, my dear sister?"

"No, Trotwood."

She will have to save herself. She will have to brace herself against the waters and uncertainty closing in around her, and pray that her love can be her lifeline, and that she can grasp it even in the darkness.


	4. Dog Days Are Over

4 - Dog Days Are Over/Florence + the Machine

**Prompt #068.** _Lightening._

Oh God. Oh God in Heaven, could it be true?

"Agnes, dear Agnes, oh, so much more than sister!"

No, it could not be. No, there was no break in those clouds except for that sunlight she had searched out herself. It could not be that she felt warm, felt some hope, oh lord – no. She had lived so long in a sort of equilibrium between sadness and resignation, and fearful longing, had dreamt of this moment so often, she could scarcely admit it possible except as another of the hateful visions that swirled around her in her sleep. No. Love and romance was for heroines of novels, it was not for her.

"Agnes, dear Agnes?"

She shut out the streaming radiance with her hands, and felt them pulled gently away. She grasped at the edge of her companion, her dear piano, and turned, and whirled, practically senseless.

"Agnes, my life!"

My life. His life. She had lived her life in silence, had lived it entirely alone, and now, he claimed her life as his own? Could it be possible that he wanted it at all?

And there are tears, and laughing, and instead she clasps _him_ in her hands, grasps his coat lapels in an ecstasy, like some madwoman, as if she could run down the street streaming ribbons behind her like the child she was forbidden to be.

"Trotwood – I have loved you all my life!"


	5. Check Yes, Juliet

5 - Check Yes Juliet/We the Kings

**Prompt #074.** _Dark._

He was a villain. He was a miserable reprobate, and there was no repairing him. He had been banished by his poverty, banished by an alienation of affections, but he was going to commend himself to God and Dora and bear the consequences, come what may. How dare he, as a poor jobless wretch, claim the right to sneak out in the night, to make his way like some vagabond, down the streets in the darkness, and face the disapproving eyes of the lampposts, to arrive at HER street, and walk around HER house, and look up at HER bedroom window, when he didn't any longer have the right to touch her hand? Some words of Shakespeare came into his head. What play they were from, he was not sure, but he hoped they were from _Romeo and Juliet_ and not from _Macbeth_ as he called them in a whisper to her window. At this moment, he would have loved to run away, to take her with him, to ignore his poverty and to bask in her sweet beauty, and take her off and marry her and live happily ever after.

But it was dark and it was cold and this was a foolish idea, and she slept within, senseless of his torment, which knowledge chafed him a bit.

He knew, or hoped, at least, she would have done it.

But he wouldn't have done it to her.

And so he walked home and woke up with what he mightily suspected was a head cold contributed by the damp night humors, for such is the plight of the lover.


	6. Animal

6 – Animal/Neon Trees

**Prompt #069.** _Thunder._

Its strange to see her there in the firelight, sitting at her harp, strumming the chords as violently as if she struck at them with a claw, and to think of her in quite a sentimental way, to look at her dark hair and black sharp eyes with a sort of fondness for times past. Perhaps it's just a subconscious goading-on by the presence of David and the fact that you are Steerforth and ought to be dashing to pieces any woman in the room…or perhaps it's the old ugly attraction you used to have for her. Yes, you are quite aware that you hate one another, but then…hate is just the cousin of love, is it not? And so you take one long look at her.

She raises her black hawklike eyes, and at that moment, it seems there is some kind of beastly force binding the two of you together in the magnetized stare, and you know that you have an equally likely chance of taking her in your arms with unbridled passion or of being attacked fiercely by her, as if you had attempted to bewitch a panther.

Five minutes later and you find she is a panther tonight, and you are ashamed and your face is stinging, and you recall that you are selfish and that's what got you in this mess in the first place – that the most powerful woman you know, and the one that could match you in strength and turn your veins to fire, has been banished at your own hand.


	7. Mad World

7 - Mad World/Tears for Fears

**Prompt #081.** _How?_

Mr. Dick always imagined that the people who weren't overly concerned with the head of King Charles the First, as he was, must live a much happier and productive life. Miss Betsey was quite fierce at times, he admitted, but he suspected she was useful and happy, at least. And yet, here he sat, writing at his memorial, and drifting off as always, and finding that the world was spinning and almost as mad as himself. For instance, there was Trotwood, who ought to be very much in love, rather darker in spirit than usual; there was Dora, who should be as quick as a bright light and happy as a butterfly, drifting farther and farther away at each passing glance; there was Miss Betsey, who was silent and stern when she regarded Dr. Strong and Annie Strong – which Mr. Dick cannot comprehend. And of course there was Miss Wickfield, so good, and yet treated so very badly by everyone all around her.

He could not understand it at all. Of course in his own madness, he assumed he was just seeing things wrong, as – oh dear – they shouldn't have been this way at all. It was strange and it was sad. If he were a great man, he would set his pen to paper and write them all a happy ending.

_But perhaps_, came one of his silly thoughts, _the better thing to do is to__** do **__some thing about it. _

So Mr. Dick leaned his chin against the point of his pen, and got ink all over his face, but as he did so he formulated a plan on how to fix things, once and for all.


	8. Viva La Vida

8 – Viva La Vida/Coldplay

**Prompt #086.** _Choices._

Good god. You took it too far. You always take it too far. Of course she was beautiful, of course you deserved her, you did nothing _not_ to deserve her, and were so much better than the lout she'd been promised, and you did so much _for_ her. But you took so much in return – you took everything, and then cast her off the moment she failed to be new, the moment she displeased you. And you made another and worse mistake. You thought she was some frail and drooping exotic flower, a pale lily to be cut away as you felt fit. But you were very much mistaken. For the second you raise your voice to her, she shouts back with a sense of her own worth, which she got at the hands of those dull fisherman who are not, perhaps, quite such idiots as you think. The moment you threatened to rebuke or restrain her, she rebelled and threatened back. And when you made the attempt, she escaped. The best thing that happened to you, the thing that could have led you to such great heights, to happiness and pride, you cast away as though you had thrown it into the sea with your own hands.

So you are thrown across your bed, and the warmth of Italy is surging through the windows around you, and yet you are miserable.

And the worst part of it is, for the first time in your life, you take the blame, you admit it was all your fault. All of it.


	9. ANGEL

9 - A.N.G.E.L. /Natasha Bedingfield

**Prompt #023.** _Lovers._

When I made the holy vow of marriage under the sanctimony of the altar on that June day, I took that vow very seriously. I was to be a wife. A wife of a good man, though a flawed man. Yes, he was poor with money, but I did not feel we needed money; I felt we needed romance, and that he gave to me freely. He spoke like a poet whenever he opened his mouth, he treated me with the utmost delicacy, as if I were a queen, and in return, I pledged him my loyalty. And I hope I have never rescinded on that promise. I hope that I have been to him what he has been to me, that I allowed him to remain the thing I loved without hindering him or harping on his shortcomings, that I was an inspiration. Perhaps he was flawed, perhaps we lived poorly, and that I was selfish at times and wished for things better, but at the same time, I was always sensible of his devotion to myself and our progeny and society.

And when I saw the goodness in him when he saved a poor girl from misery and a weak man from mischief, I felt I had been repaid tenfold, as if by a prince.


	10. Material Things

10 – Material Things/Jake Troth

_Writer's Choice_

The general public has always said riches aren't everything and that the greatest wealth is in good deeds, but it was Uriah Heep's personal experience that good deads paid a great deal less than treachery and cunning. Oh, certainly, he had received some charitable provisions by people who pitied him throughout his life, though he didn't care much for such discarded finery. But now, simply by making a few, ahem – _amendations_ – in the account books, the world was at his command.

But it was not just the material things that mattered – though those were quite satisfactory on their own. Because power, and triumph, and the fulfillment of ambition, were worth something, as well.

He had those too.


End file.
